Welcome.

After the exhortation (okay, light suggestion) of dozens among dozens of people (okay, like... three) who are irrationally obsessed with all things Islanders, I have finally decided to get my act together and start this blog. I named it after my favorite song about Long Island by my all-time favorite music group, De La Soul.

I'll begin with a quick introduction: my name is Matthew, and I picked up the Isles bug from living in Nassau County for the better part of two decades. After making the apocalyptically bad decision to attend law school, I now live in Washington, D.C. I'm on schedule to graduate in December 2011 (theoretically, anyway) with a JD and an LLM in Taxation. Riveting stuff, I know.

I follow the Isles' prospects pretty closely. Somewhere in there, I squeeze in some actual NHL games. Most of the initial readers will probably know me as the infamous Dice on Ice from HFBoards or Mister Derp from Islander Mania. For those of you who are into that thing, I'm also known as Smokey on Mets Refugees and Prince of Thieves on TheGangGreen.

Most of my long-winded, completely ridiculous stream-of-consciousness rants on various topics will be relocated here. My infinitely long game reports from various forms of amateur hockey will be posted here as well. For those of you who have actually enjoyed these seemingly unending dissertations, this will be your (hopefully) daily dose of that.

On a final note, thanks for stopping by. I greatly appreciate your readership. Feel free to drop a comment every once in awhile, but I will moderate them for spam, flame wars, and general buffoonery. That being said, don't hesitate to disagree with me, considering I'm probably wrong about everything. When in doubt, keep the following in mind: I am not a professional, and I am clueless.